Audio: Ayaan Hirsi Ali defends the imam who says she must be killed

posted at 9:22 am on April 25, 2007 by Allahpundit

From John Gibson’s radio show yesterday. Thanks to reader Emma for sending it along. Gibby wants to know what she thinks of Imam Fouad ElBayly telling an interviewer that she deserves to die for defaming Islam. Exactly right, retorts AHA; that’s what the Koran says. The man’s just following his religion. The takeaway: “This imam has been strikingly honest.”

As of this writing, ElBayly is scheduled to visit the University of Pittsburgh to talk faith with the student body. Weasel Zippers is trying to change that. Meanwhile, Reuters reports multicultural tensions have miraculously eased since Hirsi Ali’s departure from the Netherlands according to several Dutch Muslim women interviewed. You mean it was all her fault, including the murder of Theo Van Gogh? Yeah, sort of:

Hirsi Ali caused uproar by calling Islam “backward,” and by branding the prophet Mohammad a pedophile and a tyrant. However, it was the film “Submission” she wrote for Dutch television which most provoked…

“If she wanted to campaign against violence against women then she shouldn’t have written the Koran text on the body, because that was offensive to many of the religious women she claimed she was trying to help,” said Altintas.

“Her methods were such that rather than attracting Muslim women she pushed them away… She polarized things,” said 19-year-old student Suzan Yucel from Eindhoven.

The film’s director Theo van Gogh was gunned down on an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a Dutch-Moroccan, who stabbed a note to his body addressed to Hirsi Ali warning she would be next.

The Dutch watched in disbelief as their country, once prized as a liberal, multicultural model, slid into a mood of mutual hostility and tit-for-tat attacks on mosques and churches.

Never mind the gunman — if only she hadn’t made the film…

Speaking of multicultural tensions, here’s the latest in the battle of assimilation. It’s good news, but, er, isn’t the point of the headscarf to suppress feminine physical appeal and show modesty before god and man? In that case, how exactly do you incorporate it into fashion?

[I]t sounds like much of the “relief” expressed in the Reuters piece has to do with fear of what Ali provoked from Dutch Muslims rather than a fundamental misunderstanding of Islam on her part. It’s essentially another example of Mark Steyn’s quod erat demonstrandum: Don’t say we’re violent, or we’ll kill you.

Update: Silly video via Sugiero — Hirsi Ali takes on Mohammad in the ultimate test of wills. No doubt this will be cited as a contributing factor the next time a Dutch Muslim shoots a filmmaker in cold blood.

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Do Muslims think God is such a wimp that He needs their help to wipe out His enemies? AHA seems like a nice enough person to me, and I, for one, think the world would be the poorer without her. Nevertheless, if God wants to take her out, I would imagine that He could pull it off without help from some loon of an Imam…

Perhaps the Islamists (and the rest of us, for that matter) would do better to focus our religious thoughts on making ourselves better, rather than on making others more compliant.

Re: headscarf fashion—The point is to make it seem normal and harmless, something that can easily be integrated into one of the few passions Europe has left, fashion. From the point of view of the Muslims, the repression of feminine physical appeal comes later, they don’t have the numbers yet. From the point of view of the Euros, anything non-Western is inherently sweet.

exactly. Who are these women dressing for? Other women, or men? If the point of the muslim dress code is to make the feminine body less appealing, then this makes no sense. Is this a sneaky way for the women to eventually abandon this absurd notion of covering the body? maybe. maybe it’s a baby step – shorten the skirt, wear over jeans, a little tighter, headscarf a little smaller – eventually, remove the headscarf, just wear a baseball cap. anyway, you get the point.

Perhaps the Islamists (and the rest of us, for that matter) would do better to focus our religious thoughts on making ourselves better, rather than on making others more compliant

Excellent post Morganfrost and that is why there is such an uproar over religion in general these days. It’s being seen as people trying to change other people and basically not practicing what they preach. The question I have is why do so many outlets (Libs, main stream media etc.) give the Islamic cult (I mean religion) a free ride and continuously bash JudeoChristian religions. Is it fear of the Islamists? Is it the resentment of being “preached down” to for centuries while those preaching didn’t practice by the Christians? Food for though.

Speaking of multicultural tensions, here’s the latest in the battle of assimilation. It’s good news, but, er, isn’t the point of the headscarf to suppress feminine physical appeal and show modesty before god and man? In that case, how exactly do you incorporate it into fashion?

Ummm…Here’s a question for the guys. Is the current trend in facial hair for men just a cyclic thing? Everyone looks Muslim nowadays. ;)

I disagree that AHA is defending this imam.She is very cleverly letting Islam speak for itself by not disagreeing with the imam.
Sadly,some people still need convincing that Islam is not a religion of peace but of subservience and death.

AHA what a courageous lady and a former member of the Dutch Parlament to boot. Cmon she’s getting death threats one day and doing interviews the next and we know these guys ain’t fooling. I hope her speaking engagments triple in frequency and size. I am courious to see how the Christian community of Penn. reacts to the Imam’s teachings. Afterall he is in the Amish/Menonite belt.I hope this sparks some activism in the form of teaching and preaching Christianity.